Letter to the Editor: Abolish the Electoral College

In response to the letter "Democrats believe Trump legitimately elected": Yes, but remember the words of our president, "The system is totally rigged."

True. The presidential electoral system in the United States is totally and legally rigged by the United States Constitution.

It's pretty stunning that the Electoral College, an unbelievably archaic system, elected Donald Trump. Nowhere else in the world does the loser win. If you think the historic squeaker of 2016, where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote (48.2 percent to 46.1 percent) by almost three million more votes than Trump and lost, is bad — it gets worse. Thanks to the Electoral College it is theoretically possible to win the presidency with only 21.8 percent of the popular vote!

The system is not fair and this is why. The less populated the state, the more their electoral vote counts. An electoral vote in Wyoming is worth three time more than Texas and four times more than California. Beautiful country, but this is about counting votes not surveying territory. It's time to change the presidential election to one person, one vote and to be done with this hocus pocus and the drama of pitting red states against blue states. Red states and blue states are an illusion created by the Electoral College and its winner-take-all system, where one vote or even a small percentage can change its color, a total misrepresentation of reality.

Thanks to the Electoral College system we can only muse about the difference between the popular vote totals and the real story. The real story in 2016 was not the three million more votes Hillary got. The real story was that over 32 million of Clinton's votes were nullified thanks to winner-take-all. In Ohio, for instance 2,394,164 votes were canceled, in Michigan 2,268,839, in Wisconsin 1,382,536, and so on. Voices not heard. Meaningless votes — a crushing blow to democracy.

States could change this themselves without amending the Constitution by dividing electors accordingly by vote count — but don't hold your breath.

WILLIAM MUZZY, PLAIN TOWNSHIP

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